Oldboy: Asian Cinema Is Way More F***ed Up Than Ours

This will be the first Asian film I've posted about, and probably one of the only Korean films. It's a deeply disturbing and intense psychological thriller called Oldboy. It is a fine film, with an immensely engaging story, top-notch acting (even considering the relatively poor English voice-over), and a punchy twist ending that makes The Sixth Sense look like Sesame Street. And Sesame Street doesn't even have twists.

Set in presumably contemporary Korea, in a town I'm not sure is ever specifically identified, Oh Dae-su is drunk off his ass. He's pretty useless, in general, and his friend needs to retrieve him from the police station. He drunkenly calls his young daughter to wish her a happy birthday, and when his friend gets on the phone to tell Oh Dae-su's wife that he'll be home soon, he's abducted. He's locked up in a hotel room for the next fifteen years, without any idea of who captured him or why. He spends his days watching TV, tattooing the passing time on himself, and shadowboxing. Eventually, he slowly begins digging his way out, and the day he gets his hand outside, he is released, left on the roof of a building with a new suit and his prison journals. Then things get a little weird.

The actor that plays Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) went through a radical physical transformation for the movie; he was somewhat overweight and out of shape in the beginning, and becomes fit and a talented fighter by the time his character is released from his "prison." He has a few incredible fight scenes, one which took three days to perfect and is actually one continuous take, with one bit of CG (a knife that stabs into Oh Dae-su), and several where he just fights people. But this isn't an action movie, really. He's given five days to track down his captor, and figure out why he was imprisoned for so long. The truth is so shocking and insane, you probably wouldn't even believe me if I told you. Also, he spends a lot of time like this:

Oldboy was released in 2003, and was directed by Park Chan-wook. It was based on a Japanese manga of the same name, and won the Grand Prix of the Jury at the 57th Cannes Film Festival, as well as a handful of other awards. There's really no doubt why it won so many awards: you probably won't see the ending coming, and it's pretty hard to turn away, even during the weird and gruesome bits.

Dae-su does find out who his captor is, but it doesn't really help him much. He doesn't recognize the man, played by youthful but intense Korean actor Yu Ji-tae, nor does his name ring a bell. The apparent motivation behind everything is "Oh Dae-su talks too much," but this makes even less sense. Dae-su meets a young woman his first night released, played by Kang Hye-jeong. Believe me, she has an absolutely terrible secret, but it's so secret that she doesn't even know what it is. When Oh Dae-su finally learns the truth at the end of the movie, it's so freaking traumatic and insane, he literally snips out his tongue with scissors. Here, look!

Ok, sorry, so that picture is from after he cuts out his own tongue, to keep the secret from his love interest Mi-do. Seriously, if this movie was any older, I'd tell you what the secret is! It's such a juicy, juicy secret, too! But, unfortunately, I have a rule about spoiling movies that aren't old enough to buy cigarettes for themselves. Maybe in 2021 I can reveal it. I highly recommend this movie, but I feel I should warn that there are some extraordinarily graphic scenes of sex and violence, and almost as gross, a scene where he eats an octopus like a wad of spaghetti, as it slimes all over his face, writhing around. Yes, the octopus that he eats is alive while he's eating it, and it's quite profoundly disquieting.

I don't know what it is about Asian cinema that is so much more out of whack than American cinema. Don't even get me started on Japanese films... One of these days, I'll have to review some Takashi Miike films (like Ichi the Killer and Audition, or maybe Sukiyaki Western Django, even though that one isn't too disturbing). The sad thing is, we'll probably try to remake it over here, and it will be missing virtually everything that makes it great. The plot twist probably won't be there (there are some stigmas in this country about ... what's implied/revealed).

The bottom line is, it's a complicated, convoluted story of lust, violence, revenge, love, hatred, and fear. Lots of people die, lots of weird, crazy stuff happens (the first person Oh Dae-su encounters at the start of the film is a suicidal man on the roof; Dae-su tells the man his story, and then leaves. When he exits the building, the man hurtles into a parked car behind him). Also, did I mention that he cuts out his own freaking tongue?

This film rates a 9.1 on my Weird Shit-O-Meter®, and deserves four out of five writhing, delicious octopuses (octopi?), or four out of five [I can't even tell you, the urge to spoil is killing me!].

Marathon Man: Way Different Than The Princess Bride

Hey, look at that, we're back in the 1970s again. After yesterday's brief foray into the movies of the 2000s, the next film on my Netflix queue was the 1976 paranoid thriller Marathon Man. You may not know this, but William Goldman wrote the novel that this movie is based upon. William Gibson is most well known for writing The Princess Bride, later made into a movie movie of the same name. Marathon Man has no similarities in plot or characterization whatsoever to his more famous work. However, it isn't a bad movie, and is actually quite taut with tension and paranoia at times, with some great performances by Dustin Hoffman, Roy Scheider, and Laurence Olivier.

Marathon Man was directed by John Schleisinger, and was released in 1976. Hoffman plays Thomas "Babe" Levy, a History PhD candidate nearly obsessed with his father's suicide due to his implication in the McCarthy hearings. His brother Doc (Scheider) is a covert government agent, assigned to courier a large cache of diamonds. The diamonds are the property of Dr. Szell (Olivier), a former Nazi. When his brother (played by, I shit you not, Ben Dover) is killed in a car accident, he needs to come take care of the diamonds. For some reason, Babe is targeted by Dr. Szell, and Doc is murdered. An amateur marathon runner, Babe needs to stop running and face things head on, regardless of the dangers and consequences.

Thrillers in the '70s are so much different than contemporary thrillers. They leave much more to the imagination, and rely much more upon editing techniques, camera angles, music, and pacing, and not just shocks, violence, and special effects. The most memorable (and oft-imitated/parodied) scene in the film is an especially chilling dental torture scene, where Szell tries to extract information from Babe, repeating the phrase "Is it safe?" in an increasingly disturbing manner. There's not a lot of gross close-ups of metal hooks dragging slowly and agonizingly across teeth, rending gums in a gush of blood, the screech of metal on bone like fingernails on chalkboard. Just a subtle medium shot, decently long takes, the uncomfortable repetition of "Is it safe?" and Hoffman's agonized howls, and infantile dependance and desire for relief in the form of oil of cloves. Unfortunately, he doesn't know anything, and doesn't know whether it's safe" or not. He briefly is rescued by his brother Doc's superior Janeway (William Devane), who is also hinted to be Doc's boyfriend. (In an earlier scene, he's talking to someone named "Janey" on the phone, and when Janeway introduces himself to Babe, he calls himself Janey.) Janeway turns out to be a double agent, working with Szell all along, and brings Babe back to the terror dentist for more torture.

Of course, there's also a conniving and deceitful foreign woman. She pretends to be interested in Babe, in order to get closer to him, and get more information (they assume Doc has filled him in on the situation, even though he didn't know Doc was even in the government until after he died). Doc realizes there's something suspicious about her and catches her in a lie during an interesting dinner scene where Hoffman's character is wearing a polo shirt with a bow tie, and a hideous tan-plaid blazer.

Maybe I wasn't paying too close attention, or maybe I'm just a little sleepy, but I couldn't really figure out why Szell needed to be an ex-Nazi, and why they kept bringing up Babe and Doc's father, his suicide, and the McCarthy hearings. The diamonds could just as easily have been from some random guy, some German criminal, or pretty much anybody. I fail to see how it makes a difference, or enhances the story whatsoever. I might have to watch it again at some point and see if there was some connection that I missed the first time around. To some extent, there's an interesting commentary going on: Szell goes to the Diamond district to get some information on how much the diamonds would be worth, where he encounters Jews pretty much everywhere, much to his dismay. Even more disturbing, an old woman seems to recognize him as a Nazi, and one man directly confronts him about it. In the opening scene, when his brother is killed in a car accident, it's a semi-humorous car chase scene between him and an elderly Jewish man, in a bizarre road rage scene. Other than that, I can't really see how it matters.

The best part of the movie, to me, is how bad-ass Dustin Hoffman can be. I'm not used to him being presented as a character than can kick anyone's ass, or can be somewhat vicious or clever in any way. After pretty much everyone except Szell and Babe are killed in some manner, Babe hunts the crazy Nazi-dentist down, taking him hostage and bringing him to the pump rooms in the Central Park reservoir. There, he tosses diamonds like confetti into the water, just to drive Szell crazy. He then tells Szell that he can take away as many diamonds he can carry... so long as he eats them (he the commands him in German, as well, to "Essen!"). The formerly diamond-hungry Nazi manages to force one down before stopping. After a brief tussle, where Szell tries to slice up Babe with a retractable blade he has concealed within his coat (a really cool little killing gadget that isn't really explained or given particular attention, which is odd), and Babe throws the briefcase down the stairs. The diamonds (and the coffee cans and random tins that had held the diamonds) go flying into the water. In trying to chase after them, he falls, killing himself with his own blade. Babe leaves him floating facedown in the water. Verdict: Totally badass.

If you haven't seen a thriller made prior to 1995, I suggest checking this movie out. If you're a fan of The Princess Bride, check this out, too, since it was based on a book by the same author. I think it's interesting when authors have such variation in their work. It has its weird moments, some moments of extreme discomfort and tension, as well as some great performances (especially Hoffman's method acting performance, where he would really run before out-of-breath scenes so it was real, and who really wanted to be held underwater as long as he could stand during a bathtub drowning attempt scene). I give it four kick-ass Dustin Hoffmans out of five, or four Nazi dentists out of five.

Just ask yourself: Is it safe?

The Plot Has Been: Derailed

There's a reason that most of my posts have been about movies that are at least twenty years old. Mainly, I tend to prefer movies from the 80s, especially when it comes to horror/thriller films. It's also my tendency to put older movies in my Netflix queue, as they;re usually harder to find in traditional rental stores. Also, a lot of mainstream movies these days just aren't very entertaining.

There was only one kinda sorta "oh, cool!" moment during the movie, but it's part of the twist ending, and since this movie is only a few years old, I'm not terribly comfortable spoiling it outright. But it's a pretty cool scene, and it's a pretty good line. Unfortunately, it's the only really decent part of the movie.

Derailed was released in 2005, and directed by Mikael Håfström, and stars Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston. It was based (presumably loosely) on a novel of the same name written by Jason Siegel. This top-notch cast doesn't do much for the film in general, though. For a movie that's supposed to be a taut psychological thriller, everyone seems vaguely uninterested in what's going on. For example, the two main characters start off like they're going to have a steamy affair, but for the most part, they just look like this:

Have you ever seen two people about to go to a hotel and have tawdry sex look more terminally bored and full of malaise and lethargy? For the love of God, man, tip her a wink, pat her behind, brush your fingers across hers, do something to indicate that you aren't just randomly walking past each other on the street! This serves as a basic metaphor for the movie.

There's a great load of potential, here. Mild-mannered Charles Schine happens to meet Lucinda Harris on the train into the city (Chicago). He was running late, missed his normal train and forgot to buy a ticket. She buys him one out of "generosity," and they flirt with each other for a few commutes. Eventually, their relationship escalates when a drunken idiot hits on her in a bar, and Charles knocks him out. Before they can consummate their cheap affair, they're mugged at gunpoint, Charles is knocked out, and Lucinda is brutally raped.

The next morning, he feels guilty, but she doesn't want to call the cops and expose their affair. Soon afterwards, the man calls Charles up, identifies himself as LaRoche, and blackmails him for $20,000. Charles pays, and thinks he is safe. The next month, LaRoche blackmails him yet again for $100,000, this time having entered Charles's house under the auspices of a business call, and charms Charles's wife and daughter. Charles borrows $10,000 from his job to pay the mailroom guy Wilson (played by The RZA) to "scare" LaRoche off. Wilson is then kileld by LaRoche, and Charles is plunged deeper into a world of crime, murder, extortion, confusion, betrayal, and deception.

It has a pretty good twist ending, with a couple of minor twists beforehand. Clive Owen is kind of reservedly bad-ass, not really out-and-out putting the smack down, but providing that low-key "maybe he'll cut my head off with his shoe" kind of performance he's known for. The guy that plays the bad guy (Vincent Cassell) is pretty decent too, somehow able to be charmingly French and a sleazy low-life all at the same time.

Luckily for me, one of the characters asks a question that I had been pondering the whole time: "I don't understand. Why would he rape her?" That's a good question, random unnamed guy that asks the question in the movie. It isn't a particularly graphic scene, it doesn't seem to enhance anything at first. Maybe it's because Jennifer Aniston has been trying to shed her "Rachel on Friends" role for such a long time. But it seems like plot-gratuitous, instead of sexually gratuitous. The basic point is for Charles to feel extra guilty, that he should have been able to protect her. It's especially terrible when he meets her later, wanting to go to the cops, and she tells him that she needed an abortion; the subject of going to the cops isn't broached again.

Charles also has a daughter that is a Type 1 diabetic, which means they have a home dialysis machine, and it puts additional strain on his marriage and finances. This is also to make us feel extra terrible that he has to pay all that money (especially since the $100,000 was directly from their savings for her medical bills). It seems like every little detail is designed to manipulate the audience, to make up for the weak plot and vaguely defined and occasionally nonsensical character behaviors.

I really wanted to like this movie more. I wish I could tell you guys more about the ending, because it's the best part. Oh well. It's barely worth a first look, and I probably won't watch it again. I give Derailed two awkwardly emotionless glances between would-be lovers out of five, or two wasted potentials out of five.

Altered States: Crazier Than Jacob's Ladder

Remember how I said that Jacob's Ladder was a movie that was pretty crazy? Well, that was before I watched Altered States. Unfortunately, being infinitely crazier doesn't make it better. It just makes it certifiably insane.

Directed by Ken Russell and featuring the debut of both William Hurt and an itty bitty Drew Barrymore, Altered States is the story of a Harvard Medical doctor and scientist, Dr. Eddie Jessup, who studies schizophrenia and the idea that alternative and unusual mental states are just as real and valid as "normal" ones. He's also fairly disjointed, having suffered from religious visions as a child until he was sixteen, losing faith when his father died of cancer. He grows curious of sensory deprivation, hallucinatory drugs, and achieving altered states of consciousness. Things take a completely ridiculous turn, however, when his sojourns into peyote and sealed tanks physically devolves his genetic structure, resulting in what can only be described as "weird shit."

It can be classified as a psychological thriller/body-horror film in that the main character is a psychologist, and some pretty screwed up and horrible things end up happening to his body. It also features some of the most bizarre and complicated montage sequences I've seen, featuring genuinely freaky goats with a half-dozen eyes, creepy religious images, lava, fires, fields of yellow flowers, clouds, fish, eel, a lizard that turns into his wife, and then they both get covered in ash and erode into nothingness, etc. Some of them are so random that they're unrecognizable, and seem to be intended to give the audience itself hallucinations or seizures. I'm sure if I really wanted to, I could have gone through frame-by-frame, and tried to piece apart the images, the visual metaphor encased within. I may love movies way too much, but I do not love them that much.

Almost despite itself, the film and its characters are able to raise some interesting questions concerning the nature of human consciousness, before it departs from such actual scientific stuff and focuses more on Jessup turning into a tiny monkey man and rampaging around a zoo, eating a live goat. Seriously. (The best part of the scene is when monkey-Jessup throws a stone at a goat, striking it square in the face. We are fortunate enough to be treated to this image as an audience, though I wasn't able to capture it or find it to show you. Just imagine, if you will: A goat. Getting hit in the face with a rock.)

The general idea seems to be that our current state, our current position in evolution, society, religion, etc., is mostly based on our "normal" perceptions of the universe around us. He also postulates that our atoms contain six billion years of memories, and the potential to harness that energy, those memories, those previous states is there in every atom of everything, and he seems to prove it in his own crazy-ass way. Once he begins using psychotropic drugs and immersing himself in a tank or a boiler with no stimuli from the outside world, his hallucinations become real, and enact a real biological and genetic change. It isn't as cool as it sounds, though. Eventually, he devolves into a strange melty-jello-man, with no real features, limbs, or identifiers, other than a vaguely human face and a screaming mouth. For some reason, this change also results in an extremely high output of energy, which nearly destroys the laboratory. The changes aren't pleasant for anyone: When he was a tiny monkey-thing, he almost beat a security guard to death, fought with some neighborhood dogs, snuck into a zoo, and ate a goat. His wife Emily (played by Blair Brown, you can see her currently on Fringe) seems to be the only one that can snap him out of these increasingly horrible modifications his body seems intent upon going through.

Bob Balaban is also in this movie, and I just really like his name. He plays another scientist, or researcher, or something, and his job is to keep an eye on things while Jessup is in the sensory deprivation chambers, and make notes on the EEG readings when something interesting happens. There's also another guy, Mason, a character whom I at first thought was some arbitrary hobo/drunk friend of theirs, but it later turns out that he's a professor of endocrinology (study of the endocrine system, hormones, etc.). He's the classic representation of modern science, where even though he has seen the results himself, refuses (in a very violent, aggressive, and especially unconvincingly vehement manner) that it's all poppycock, or hogwash, or craziness. Bob Balaban is more enthusiastic, but it may be mostly jealousy. Emily is fascinated as an anthropologist, as well as frightened as his wife, or ex-wife, or whatever she happens to be (Jessup is so crazy that he never apparently told her that he loved her, even though they were/are married and had two kids, one of whom was played by a tiny Drew Barrymore).

Anyway, the movie barely makes sense. By the end, he's almost devolved into nothingness, when he somehow transfers the regression to Emily, who then ends up looking like Magma from the New Mutants comic books. Then, he turns into a bunch of 1980s special effects, they both materialize (naked) on the hallway floor together, he tells her that he loves her, and BAM we've got ourselves an ending.

Unfortunately, the characters aren't developed enough for me, but the story is interesting and the idea behind it definitely had some potential to go someplace interesting. The montage sequences are fascinating purely on an aesthetic arrangement standpoint, featuring images and themes that are obviously meant to mean something, but unfortunately aren't given enough attention or screen time to be figured out or even cursorily scrutinized by the audience. It does, however, feature some disturbingly bizarre displays of true body horror, where his skin seems to be moving, roiling, changing, first on his arms and then on his chest, which is typically followed by some visual stimuli and hallucination. The body horror genre isn't seen too much these days, but it should always have some vaguely sweet spot in the hearts of all audiences. Audiences will always have bodies, and the threat of something terrible happening to the human body from within is infinitely more frightening than a giant shark, or a machete wielding weirdo, or lepruchauns, or gremlins, or anything like that. Your body is a machine, pumping blood and oxygen and other whatnots around, and it can fail at any time, or betray you in terrible, horrible ways. Think about that.

This movie isn't terrible by any means. It's decent for what it is, and what it's trying to do, and William Hurt is actually a very interesting (if underdeveloped) character. I kept expecting something more interesting to happen, but it never really did. The effects are what can be expected of 1980, but it does use some very interesting editing techniques to create some very disturbing and confusing montage sequences, which is also part of the point. It's worth a watch, at least. Maybe it would be better if you took some drugs, first. I give it three whacked-out-Indian-shamans out of five, or three stone-pelted goats out of five.